Tiny people with pickles

Let's start with food. The best food we had in Japan was not sushi, but was this mochi kushikatsu, which I'll poorly translate to deep fried sticky rice cake dipped into yummy sauce.

The best noodles of 2023 are these curry udon noodles with a scoop of cream cheese. Amazing fusion goodness.

Kyoto was really into their strawberries. You got to buy one at a time, unless you bought them in a wee sandwich like below, where you get 3 halvsies. I'm more of a basket kinda person.

So instead, here I am at breakfast, eating a grilled fish, just to prove I'm ok with that. Would have preferred curry noodles though.

Kyoto has many fabulous pickles. However, I found out that if you bring them home, they go nucular (sic.) in your suitcase and risk pickling your clothes.

Instead, you can buy plastic or china food replicas.

I'm not sure what you buy any of these things for. Bit I felt like I wanted the musical ladies below, maybe as a Christmas decoration.

Along with the flag dudes and fishies. Not too expensive.

You could pay to get a fortune on pretty paper. We resisted all of these things.

As glorious as they were.

---

Torii Temples Two

It was time for some templing.

This temple is all Toriis: orange gates big and small!

We made this one, and pretended to hang it for good wishes, but instead brought it home.

The bigger toriis are donated by local businesses, which is less mystical than I'd hoped.

Special messenger foxes like hanging out in the shrines, carrying stuff around and being Shinto.

Our linguistic limitations didn't help us to understand what the sweepy bits are for, or what the big rocks mean.

We hiked most of the way up the torii mountain.

On the way down, there was also a touch of Buddhism. That's ok, Shintoism and Buddhism blend together somehow.

A lot of ropes are involved. I believe they are Shimenawa, which are used to denote holy spaces, and to separate the holy from the profane! So you wanna stay on the correct side.

In Malaysian/Indonesian Islam, as well as in Japan, ceremonial stones/graves get dressed in nice shirts. I do not know why, in either case.

This is the Higashi Hongan-ji temple.

While it's pretty, there is one main feature: Hair!

When the temple ran out of rope to drag goods around, they just made one out of devotees' hair! And then left it on display for a hundred years. Great tourist attraction; hard to photograph well.

Luckily, crowd control was well managed. Barry noted the difference.

---

Yokai your Business

Why the long face?

In Kyoto, we went to Ichijo Yokai street. Here, for reasons I failed to learn, the shopkeepers host bedraggled themed monsters called Yokai. 

Above is Bready Freddy, below Ms. Double Double.

You can really express your feelings with Yokai.The monsters get involved in the local neighbourhood, where they have a ghost flea market, and costume parties.

Barry did extensive research to determine that the above and below monsters were not the ones he was researching. Japan kind of works like that.

The kappa, that Barry looked up, are known to favor cucumbers and love to engage in sumo wrestling. Below, however, is a mangled bunnypig.

Some of the Yokai were less elaborate than others.

The Yokai should be thematically aligned to your business, of course.

If you want to start this tradition at home, a traffic cone makes a good stand.

Speaking of traffic cones, Japan has the best. They connect them with bowing people, frogs, Hello Kitty,

And even Tanukis with full anatomy!

You know, the Japanese racoon dog which adorns restaurants, looks cute, and has strangely large underbubbles.

---

Gong Xi Fa Cai and a Barrel of Bunnies!

Happy Lunar New Year! What's that in your barrel?

It's a barrel full of bunnies! There is also a bunny tower of bunnies welcoming you to the year of the rabbit!

Well, most of them are, but some just look a but sleepy and underclothed.

In any case, we enjoyed the lights, especially the dragons.

These 3 were made with tiny glass bottle lights! Not your typical cloth lantern.

There were, also traditional lanterns, fret not.

And a boat for good measure!

Here, Barry seeks good luck by "being as flexible" as the deities.

Fish and their mystical reflections.

And finally, critters to wish you a happy and healthy year of the Rabbit!

---